In Cuba, the passing of Fidel Castro from this world and of Raul Castro from power have raised urgent questions about the island's political future. In the US, Barack Obama's opening to Cuba and the reversal of that policy following the election of Donald Trump have made the nature of the historic relationship between the two countries a subject of debate once more. In both countries, the time is ripe for a new reckoning with Cuba's history and its relationship to the United States.

Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an epic, sweeping narrative of more than 500 years of Cuban history, reconceived and written for a moment when history itself seems up for grabs. Starting on the eve of the arrival of Columbus and ending with the US election of 2020, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of modern Cuba, with its dramatic history of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Throughout, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between Cuba and its neighbor to the north, documenting not only the influence of the US on Cuba but also the many ways Cuba has been a recurring presence in US history. This, then, is a history of Cuba that will also give American readers unexpected insights into the history of their own country.

Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on over thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States--as well as her own extensive travel in Cuba over the same period--this is a stunning and monumental history of Cuba like no other.

Ada Ferrer is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, where she has taught since 1995. 

She is the author of Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898, winner of the Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history, and Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University as well as multiple prizes from the American Historical Association. 

Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, she has been traveling to and conducting research on the island since 1990.

Awards and Recognitions 

2018 Guggenheim Fellowship; Dorothy Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library; 2015 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the best book on slavery from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Race, and Resistance; the 2015 Frederich Katz Prize for the best book in Latin American History from the American Historical Association, the 2015 Wesley-Logan Prize for the best book in African Diaspora history from the AHA , and the 2015 James Rawley Prize also from the AHA for the best book in Atlantic World History; the 2015 Haiti Illumination Book Prize from the Haitian Studies Association; Honorable Mention for the PROSE Award in European and World History. 

John Hope Franklin Prize (Law and Society Association) for the Best Article on Race and Racism, 2013. Berkshire Conference Article Prize, 2013. Paul Vanderwood Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 2013. American Council of Learned Societes/NEH/SSRC Fellowship in Area Studies, 2011-2012, Berkshire Book Prize for Insurgent Cuba (for the best first book by a woman historian in any field of history), Spanish Ministry of Culture Fellowship, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003-2004, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2000-2001

Research Interests 

Cuba; comparative slavery, nationalism, revolution

Education 

University of Michigan, PhD 1995

Source: New York University